BURNING BRIGHT

First UK edition, first printing. Original red cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the Biro illustrated dustwrapper. A very good copy, the binding square and firm, the extremities very lightly rubbed and bumped. There is toning to the endpapers and some spotting to the closed text-block edge and prelims, the contents are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. Complete with the rubbed, nicked and creased dustwrapper that has a few short closed tears to the edges and small chips to the head of the spine and rear flap fold. Not price clipped (7s 6d on the front flap).

Steinbeck's experimentation with a 'play-novelette', a text rich in dialogue that could be directly lifted and utilised for a theatre production, but that was written in prose so that it could be read easily in book form. The story revolves around a man who is desperate for a child and his young wife who, suspecting her husband is sterile, becomes pregnant by another man. Each scene places the characters within a different setting and profession, while the storyline remains the same. First they are circus performers in a tent, then farmers in a farm house and finally sailors on a boat.